It will be like I never existed
by Hmz0975
Summary: Waking up in the hospital after James's attack, the only person Bella wanted was Edward but how do you find someone who does not even exist?


A/N: I am not in the medical field so please ignore if a detail is incorrect. I hope you like it. Also I know it is a very unlikely pairing but please give it a try, also do read the author's note in the end.

'Beep Beep Beep Beep' the machine connected to me kept ringing continuously and I lay still trying to concentrate on the beeping sound that I could hear in my ears. I could hear a few other voices talking at the same time around me but they were hazy and unclear making me tune out of it and concentrate back again on that irritating beeping sound.

I was waking up. I could feel it. I was gaining back consciousness. My entire body hurt. Every bone of my body felt broken and I shuddered in pain, the memories of how I ended up in this state filtering through my mind.

The baseball game- James, Victoria and Laurent, the nomads- James's interest in me- running away to Phoenix with Alice and Jasper- the ballet studio- getting tricked by James into believing he had Renee- escaping from Alice and Jasper and going to meet James- him torturing me and then finally biting me on the wrist- hearing faint voices in the background and then blackness….

Oh! How had I been this naïve to believe James when he had said he had Renee? I had heard of how cunning and manipulative he was, Laurent his own coven mate had told us that but yet I had believed him and gone alone to meet him, alone in the lion's den to become the prey in place of my mother.

Why had I not told Alice or Jasper of this? Why hadn't Alice seen a vision of me leaving or why hadn't Jasper heard me leave with his higher than normal senses or felt my fear and anxiety through his empathetic powers. Surely he should have felt something coming from me with the fear and nervousness going through me. Only if I had told them, I could have been saved from all this pain that I was now facing.

A hand lightly touched my forehead suddenly making me jerk back in fear in my place from the slight coldness of it. Where was I and whose hand was that?

Was it James's?

I shuddered heavily. Had James taken me captive? I could feel my heart beating so I was still human but then where was I and why was James here?

I could hear a man's voice talking to another person, a female whose voice sounded very familiar but far away in my haze. Was it Victoria? Had they teamed up and captured me?

Where was Edward? Oh my Edward. Did he even know that I had gone to the ballet studio? Had he and the others come searching for me, to rescue me from whatever evil sadistic trap James had set for me. Had they been too late? Had James and Victoria taken me with them before my vampire family could reach there?

"Bells Kiddo, can you hear us" said a voice bringing me back to reality. I recognized that voice- Charlie but what was he doing here. I waved my hand in the air as if trying to convey to him to leave. It was not safe here though as soon as I tried to raise my hand an intense pain shot up through my body resulting in a painful wail coming out of my mouth.

"Baby, don't move yourself much. It will hurt you more" said another teary voice, my mother's. What was she doing here and why was her voice so teary? I felt bad instantly for making her cry. She was always so happy and positive that making her upset just felt wrong.

"Bella" said a third voice, a voice I didn't recognize "Can you try to open your eyes?"

The voice was mild and almost soothing. I took a few deep breaths in before willing myself to open my eyes and face reality. My parents were here and even if I had been captured by James and Victoria, at least in my last moments I would be with them, though definitely I felt bad for pulling them with me in this world. They did not deserve to pay for my mistakes.

I forced my eyes open, the white light in the room nearly blinding me. The ceilings were white and I got the feeling of a hospital room from my surroundings and the machines connected to my body. I looked around me till my eyes landed on the three people in the room, my parents who stood facing me with their hands intertwined as if supporting one another, they looked exhausted, their faces drooping and their eyes bloodshot but a small light of hope was shining in their eyes and a third person who was clearly the doctor from the white coat he had on.

So maybe I had not captured by James and Victoria but then how had I reached here, wherever I was in a hospital. It just didn't make any sense.

"Bella baby, how are you feeling now?" asked Renee sitting next to me taking my hand in hers very softly making me realize how much I had missed my mother in these past few months. I had hardly spoken to her or even sent an informal mail to her in these past few months. She had been my best friend growing up but now it felt like she hardly knew anything about me.

"Where am I?" I croaked out in a whisper looking at them. My voice felt heavy and slightly raspy.

They looked a little confused by my question and shared a look before Charlie opened his mouth to answer "You are in the Forks hospital. You were in a road accident. Don't you remember?"

I looked at them in shock and slight confusion.

An Accident? I had not been in any accident. My injuries were due to James torturing me in the ballet studio. Where had they got the idea that I had been in a road accident?

I opened my mouth to speak before shutting it back again, stopping myself from speaking something only to regret it. I had to talk to Edward before I said anything. I had to know what cover they were using to disguise the cause of my injuries in front of my parents and the other people of Forks.

Surely they would not have said the truth. They could not have owing to the supernatural part of it in my injuries. I needed to know what they had said before I contradicted their words making the situation even worse. Also I needed to find Edward to know what had happened of James. Was he dead? Had they somehow reached the ballet studio on time or was James still out there plotting a plan to capture me again?

"Where is Edward?" I asked the three worried looking people in the room. I needed Edward here with me. Where was he? He should have been here, sitting next to me when I woke up.

All three of them again shared a look with one another as if I had asked them something in a language they didn't understand and so they didn't know how to react.

I sighed in frustration and impatience "Where is Carlisle and no offense but why is he not the doctor tending to me?" I said looking at the doctor present in the room now.

Shouldn't Carlisle have been the doctor to attend to me? Of course I knew that there were other capable doctors in this hospital and Carlisle could very well be busy with another patient but I knew Edward and he had never really been comfortable with any other doctor except his own father tending to my injuries and so I was immensely confused at the moment.

"Maybe we should call Ben in?" suggested Renee again looking at Charlie who in turn looked at the doctor who was reading through a few papers in front of him alternating between looking at me and going back to the papers.

"Ben Cheney?" I asked with a baffled expression on my face

They nodded their heads quickly, a slight layer of happiness and relief now being seen in their features. What did Ben Cheney have to do with any of this and why would he be here? He was Angela's boyfriend and apart from that I had hardly spoken to him. Was Angela also here?

"Why would Ben be here?" I asked still in my daze

"Because he is your boyfriend" said Renee simply with an 'wasn't that obvious' look on her face

What? I stared at them in shock taking their words in.

X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X

Does it ever feel like your world moved from beneath your feet in just a single moment? That everything you knew and believed in was all a lie, a trick of the mind and now you are forced to face the new reality that the world has thrown upon you.

I was going to through something exactly the same at the current moment as I sat opposite Charlie, Renee and surprisingly Angela who was my best friend in this new reality I was finding myself in. It was all extremely confusing and I had no idea of what was true or false at the moment and all I could do was listen as I sat on this white hospital bed in the plain dull looking room.

"So you are saying that I have been dating Ben Cheney for the past three months?" I asked Angela again hoping for her to say no this time around. I was almost expecting her to laugh loudly and say it had been a cruel joke they had all planned to play on me after all she had been the one to date Ben in the previous reality.

She nodded her head softly and sympathetically

"And I have been in coma for the past two weeks now because of a head injury that I had got in a road accident?"

Renee nodded her head "We were so worried about you. We kept sitting here hoping that you would open your eyes"

I nodded my head slightly confused. James had thrown me around a few times but had the injuries to head been this severe to put me in a Coma?

"And you don't know anyone whose surname was Cullen?" I asked again this time looking at Charlie

He shook his head "No kiddo, like I told you before. I have been living in Forks for the past forty one years and I have never come across anyone who had the surname Cullen. There was no Dr. Cullen in Forks hospital and no five children of his that went to Forks High"

I shook my head in anger. I felt like pulling my hair out.

"But how is that possible? I remember talking to them and sitting with them during Lunch. I was dating Edward for heaven's sake" I shouted while they all gave me sympathetic glances.

So far in the one hour that had passed since I had regained consciousness, my world and everything within it had twisted and turned a few times around. After the initial shock passing of them telling me that apparently Ben Cheney was my boyfriend and not Angela's, I had refused strongly demanding to see Edward or even Alice or Emmett or Carlisle or Esme or at the moment I would have even agreed to Jasper or Rosalie who I had never even spoken to more than a few words. I just needed to see them. I needed to see Edward. Where was he?

But then my parents and Angela who had come barging in by then, with the doctor whose name I had learnt was Dr. Gerard leaving with the excuse that he needed to run a few more tests on me and talk to another doctor practicing in Seattle as my case was a special one and never heard of before in Forks, had sat down to give me a rundown of this new reality of mine.

Dr. Gerard though had suspected Retrograde Amnesia from the questions he had asked me and the fact that apparently I couldn't remember the past few months of my life, before he left to talk to the neurologist he knew of but how could I have amnesia. I remembered everything from my childhood to moving to Forks and meeting the Cullens and everything else but apparently the memories that I had and the memories that others had now differed. He had said that sometimes in the case of accidents and Coma, amnesia could occur and there were chances that the patient would get back their memory with time but I knew that I didn't have amnesia. I remembered everything that had happened in reality.

The starting had stayed the same, Renee had married Phil almost a year back and so to lessen her pain at being separated from him when she stayed back to look after me I had moved to Forks to live with Charlie in January of this year.

The date of my moving here and everything before that was the same but then suddenly what I remembered and what others remembered was different.

Angela had then taken over and had told me how I had met her and the others Ben, Mike, Jessica, Lauren, Tyler, Eric and the others from school on the first day itself. I had sat with them during lunch and though I had been quiet and reserved like I generally was, Angela and I had quickly become friends over the next few weeks. With life in Forks High being monotonous as it was, school had gone on like normal and I had made a few friends with the novelty of the new girl soon fading off. Angela had then told me that Ben, who was currently sitting in the waiting room as I had refused to see him right now, had connected with me during the photography elective class that I had too chosen and everyone except the both of us had been able to see that sudden intense connection between us both as the days passed and we became friends and finally during the spring dance with the innocent meddling of Angela and her boyfriend Eric, Ben who was as shy as I was had finally asked me out with me saying yes and since then we had been inseparable.

I had refused and had argued that I had been dating Edward all this while and Ben was Angela's boyfriend not mine. I had shouted in anger repeating the entire story of how Edward and I had met, our first date in the meadow and how I had gone to meet his family. I had told them everything removing the supernatural part of it all the while they had looked at me with sympathy in their eyes and finally they had shaken their heads and told me that this was most probably just a dream I was describing that I had seen in the state of unconsciousness and was now using to fill the gap in my memory.

A dream? Really! How could this be a dream? Edward was no dream. I knew this was reality. All of this, these past few months had actually happened. I had not been dreaming. Edward was real. I knew this. I had always said that Edward was like a dream come true for me but then how could it all have been just a mere dream but neither of them had heard anything about him or known anyone named Edward in this small little town of Forks.

I felt like I was going crazy. How could everyone except me not remember seven other people who had moved here and lived here for more than two years? It was just not possible and yet it was now the reality I was forced to live in.

"Bella" said Angela softly bringing me out of my thoughts "Ben is going crazy with worry. He just wants to see you once. Please can he come in?"

I wanted to say no. I did not even know Ben other than his identity as being Angela's boyfriend in that reality but the sadness and worry on her face had made me say otherwise and I had hesitantly nodded my head telling her to let him come in. Anyways if I needed more answers I needed to talk to Ben.

With a quick big smile she left the room leaving Charlie and Renee behind who both sat opposite me with a deep seriousness etched on their faces.

"Mom" I said looking at Renee "Do you remember me telling you anything about Edward? I must have told you something about him or Alice who was my best friend"

I had memory of mailing her Edward's photo when she had pestered me for it once I told her that I was dating Edward. She had always been so vibrant and excited in life and I remembered how excited she had been to know everything about him.

She shook her head with the same sympathetic expression which I was tired of by now on her face. I did not want sympathy, I wanted answers.

"No baby, I had not even known that you were dating which I am frankly very upset about. I thought we could talk to one another about anything and still Charlie was the one to tell me that you were dating" she huffed out with a pout "And whenever you called up you only told me of Ben and Angela, never of anyone named Edward or Alice. In fact now that I think of it you hardly ever emailed me. We always spoke on phone"

I shook my head closing my eyes. How was this possible? My head hurt from all that I had just learnt and even my injuries were now paining as I felt the effect of the painkillers fade.

"Can I see your phone?" I asked her. How could this happen? I clearly remembered all the emails I had sent her in these past few months and the replies I had received too.

She nodded her head handing her phone to me and I quickly went through her emails realizing what she was saying was in fact correct. There were no emails from me to her or her to me. Nothing in inbox sent or trash and there was no reason for me to doubt that she had deleted them from there and from the expression on her face I knew that she genuinely believed that whatever she was saying was the truth.

I felt like sleeping in the hope that maybe this is all a nightmare and the next time I woke up I would be in the Cullen's house laughing with them about this terrible nightmare I had just witnessed but no matter how much I pinched myself I did not wake up and my best friend Alice, my brother Emmett, my adoptive parents Carlisle and Esme and majorly my Edward remained only a part of fiction of memory.

"Bella" said a voice filled with so much emotion that it forced my eyes open making me look straight in the eyes of one Ben Cheney. He looked the same like I remembered- 5.8 with black short hair, golden brown skin, dark brown eyes that were covered with glasses and I could clearly see the worry and even relief in his features which clearly showed his Asian lineage.

"Ben" I said with a slight nod of acknowledgement. It felt weird facing him when I now knew that he was my 'boyfriend' in this reality when he had merely been a friend in the last one.

He sighed once before coming closer to where I was sitting on the bed and he stared at me with so much intensity in his eyes that I forced myself to look at my lap. It was as far as mildly disturbing and I wished that he would go back to looking at Angela like that. I wanted Edward to look at me like that, not anyone else. Where was Edward?

Charlie suddenly coughed making the rest of us look at him before he and Renee left the room with the pretext of needing coffee leaving me and Ben behind and I wished that Ben would have left with them too. I just wanted to be alone right now to think of how something like this could happen. Why couldn't things go back to how they were? I liked it so, I wanted it so.

"They told me that you have lost your memory of the past few months" said Ben with a heavy voice almost as if he was hardly managing to stop himself from crying.

I nodded my head knowing that there were no other words that I could use to tell him this at the moment.

"You don't remember me at all?" he whispered

I gulped before shaking my head "I am sorry"

Ben was a good person and he did not deserve to go through this crap that he had been pulled into.

He nodded his head after a few seconds "They told me that you believe that you were dating someone named Edward"

I nodded my head instantly and firmly "I don't believe this. I know this. I was dating him"

He did not say anything just kept looking at me while I looked at everywhere except him.

"I heard the nurses say that either you are assuming a dream to be real or this is just an innovative way you found to dump me"

I tried to speak but he held his hand up telling me to let him finish.

"But I believe you. I know you and I know that however weird and impossible it sounds, you are saying the truth. You would not lie about something like this and I know that this is just not something you have made up to dump me. It is a pretty lame way to dump someone though"

"Thank you" I whispered "I would never…"

He shook his head stopping me from continuing "I know you would never. If you wanted to dump me you would have come and told me this on my face not use a ridiculous ploy like this"

I had always heard from Angela and even Edward that Ben was a very good person and an even better and genuine friend. He was genuinely nice and I could see why Angela had liked him so much.

"How did my accident happen?" I asked him after a few minutes of silence. I knew how I had got injured in that reality but what about this one. It was definitely not the same or what they believed had happened.

He sighed covering his face with his hands "It was my mistake"

"How" I asked him confused

"You were at my place. We were watching a movie and once it ended I offered to drive you home in your truck that you had brought with you as it was late and you were kind of sleepy but you assured me that you were still not far gone in drowsiness and you would manage to reach home and it did not make any sense for me to come till your house in your truck and then walk back or get your truck back with me. I refused but you were adamant and…" he stopped to take a few deep breaths in before continuing again "they say you lost control while driving most probably due to drowsiness and hit another car coming from the other side. Luckily no one was severely injured but your truck caught fire a few seconds after you were pulled out"

"Oh" I said in a whisper

He nodded his head "I am so sorry Bella. I should have forced you to let me drop you or insisted more on Charlie picking you up. He had offered but you being you had decided not to bother him"

I shook my head "It is not your fault. If what you are saying is true, I am the only one to blame for driving when I was clearly sleepy"

I still did not believe this story to be true but I did not want anyone else to feel guilty for something they had no part in.

He laid his hand on mine in a comforting gesture and I nervously and abruptly pulled my hand away back making him sigh and take a step back in uneasiness.

"I am sorry. I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable" he said shaking his head and looking at the ground.

"It's okay. Please stop apologizing" I said quickly before another question hit me all of a sudden making me sit back in nervousness.

"Ben" I asked, my voice filled with hesitance "When we were together these past few months that all of you remember, Did we…. Umm did we you know…."

He interrupted me "No we have not. We have kissed obviously and done a little more but nothing other than that"

I took a breath in relief glad that at least he had no memory of me doing that. I knew how much Edward and I had done which had been nothing more than a few chaste kisses as he was always too scared that he would hurt me to do anything more.

"So" he said making me look at him, after a few minutes of silence "About us…"

I shook my head before he could continue "I am sorry but there cannot be an 'us' when I don't even remember it being there in the first place"

I was still Edward's girlfriend and mate and very soon I would find him and all this mess would be solved.

He nodded his head slowly "Don't be sorry I had expected it when they said that you didn't even remember me" "I had a request though"

I nodded my head telling him to continue

"We were friends before we got together. Let me at least be your friend if nothing more"

I nodded my head with a small smile on my face. Friends I could deal with that and very soon I would find my way back to Edward.

X-X-X-X-X-X

The next few weeks were rather boring to say the least. While my physical injuries, my leg injury being the worst was recovering, several tests to find out the reason for my amnesia and the cause of my apparent dream being considered to be real were being studied prolonging my stay in this hospital.

No one who I spoke to knew anything of the Cullens and with every passing day my hope diminished and the thought that what if this had all actually been a dream entered my mind.

No, this had not been a fantasy or a dream, my mind would argue but they why didn't anyone else know or even recognize them from their appearance. Not everyone could lose their memory or forget seven other people at the same time. Dr. Gerard had also said that often in a Coma patients claimed to see extremely real dreams as if they were in an alternate universe but I refused to believe him. This was not a dream.

My friends who had been my friends in that reality too would often come to visit me in the hospital and they had become my only source of entertainment in this dull room. They would tell me all about the pranks Mike and Tyler would play on one another and the debates Angela and I had gotten into in the past or the spring dance where Ben had asked me out, the talk of which had made me slightly uncomfortable following which Ben had made sure that no one ever spoke of the both of us being together which I was extremely thankful to him for as I did not know how I would have dealt with that.

Angela, Ben and Eric were the most frequent ones out of the others though and other than Charlie and Renee were the ones I spoke to the most. They would tell me stories of how I had become their friend or how the four of us would go out for movie dates together with the hope that maybe something would trigger my memory making me remember all of this but I would just shake my head and tell them that you can't remember something you have never forgotten but still they kept trying and with each passing day a part of me actually wanted to pretend that I had lived through all of these fun times and they were just not fake memories in my mind.

Charlie on his part would tell me of the delicious variety of food I would cook for him or how I kept the house clean and tidy most of which I remembered too making me get even more confused on this weird memory loss that I had apparently faced.

Today was my discharge from the hospital and Ben was helping me sit in Charlie's cruiser, my leg still in a cast while Renee hugged me and bid me goodbye promising that she would visit soon. She had been staying in Forks since my 'accident' and I knew that it was time for her to go back to Phil now. As much as I loved to have her near me, I knew that she missed her husband and wanted to be with him too and anyways I was pretty much used to being around Charlie alone.

I smiled at her as she kept saying that she loved me with teary eyes before sitting in her own rental for the airport and leaving. I sighed as her car left my sight. The last actual conversation we had had filtering through my mind.

A few days back while I was having breakfast alone, Ben not being around for once, Renee had entered the room in her usual chirpy manner and had said that she had a few questions for me and she wanted to know more about Edward, Alice and the other Cullens. I had been reluctant to answer but after a little forcing I had decided to humor her.

I had told her of Edward and how we had met on the first day in school. I had told her bits and pieces skipping over all the supernatural elements with Tyler's van hitting me and Edward saving me as he was standing next to me, with him saving me once again in Port Angeles, Our date in the meadow, how I had met his family and how Alice had been my best friend despite us being extreme opposites or how Emmett was my big brother and Carlisle and Esme my adoptive parents.

I had then told her in brief about James, Victoria and Laurent who hated the Cullens and Edward and how James had kidnapped me in my version of the story.

She had stayed silent all the while listening and I had almost thought that she had been lost in her thoughts, not hearing a word of what I had said when she had spoken again.

"Bella" she had started softly "Our dreams are often wishes that our conscious mind has learnt to repress and through these dreams we live our deepest desires and wishes because there is a chance that something like that cannot happen in reality or is just not acceptable in society. You had always been into the classics, looking for a man you would only find in one of those. You always dreamt of being around a man who was clearly from a different era and the Edward you describe fits that bill. You would never find someone like this in today's world. He is an ever ready knight in shining armor always ready to save the damsel in distress which I am assuming you started seeing yourself as because of the apparent lack of choice that made you move here midterm…"

She raised her hand stopping me from interrupting "I know baby that you will argue that it was your decision and blah blah but I know how less of a choice I had offered you. You hated it here but still I let you move here and maybe because of that you felt like you had no control over the situation and a man who took decisions for you was something desirable. The Alice you described was more of someone you would like to be more, outgoing and filled with energy and the Emmett you described was also goofy and fun loving which you admire in people and protective like the big brother you would have liked. Bella I had always known that Charlie and I were not the ideal parents a child should have with my flighty nature and Charlie's work being his life and Carlisle and Esme seem like your version of the ideal parents that you always wanted to have and the family you described was something you had always craved for, a huge family who all stay together. Being an only child you had always wanted siblings didn't you?"

"But what about James and Victoria?" I whispered too shocked to say anything more

"The bad you want to eradicate from your life and wasn't James the name of the boy who bullied you in fourth grade and cut your pigtails. You hated him more than anything and even Victoria, the name is very familiar…" she was quiet for a few minutes as if thinking "She was your middle school English teacher who always made you feel lesser than the others in your class and you always claimed that she did not like you very much"

"But I saw their faces in my 'dream'?"

If these people did not exist how could I see their face? That had to count for something.

She shrugged "You must have seen these faces in passerby or on the TV sometime and your mind must have just connected a random face to a random name and Coma patients have often claimed to lucid dream in their coma induced phase"

I nodded my head hesitantly. Dr. Gerard had told me about lucid dreaming, a state where the dreamer has control over dream characters, narrative and the environment those characters are in which had left me even more confused than before.

"Bella what are you thinking about?" asked Ben bringing me back to reality

I shrugged not knowing how to tell him the doubts swirling in my mind.

"If there is something in your mind you can tell me you know" he said softly taking my hand in his which I let him. In these past few weeks Ben had become a very good friend to me and I trusted him and shared quite a lot of what was going on in my head these days with him.

"I am confused" I mumbled softly "If this was just a dream and we were dating why would I pair you up with Angela who was my best friend and dating Eric? It makes no sense"

He shrugged squeezing my hand lightly "I don't know. Our dreams are often weird and make no sense. That is the best answer I can give you"

I shut my eyes as I leaned into him slightly like I did so often these days when I felt stressed out. He felt familiar in a world of unfamiliar which was strange yet welcome.

"You ready to go home Kiddo?" said Charlie coming out of the hospital having completed my discharge procedure. I rubbed the stitches that I now had on my wrist from a cut I had received in the accident as Ben helped me into the cruiser. He was following the both of us back to my house but in his car.

The house looked the same and I was glad for that familiarity and Ben and Charlie helped me inside and showed me how they had made the entire house crutch friendly having shifted all my things to the room downstairs so I wouldn't have to bother with stairs and Ben helped me settle in my new room.

Charlie soon ordered Pizzas for dinner and soon two more guests joined our small party- Billy and Jacob. They had come to visit me once or twice in the hospital but I had not been able to speak to them much on those occasions and we all sat around the living room eating pizzas and watching a game, me not so interested as the others but Ben's hand around my shoulder that was currently making circles kept me comfortable enough not to mind.

By now I had almost accepted that the Cullens and Edward had only been a figment of my imagination as there was nothing I could find about them that would be able to prove that they were real. My email that I had checked from a laptop while in the hospital proved what Renee had said as there were no emails that mentioned anything about the Cullens. The clothes and other things including stuff like photos and pendants that either Alice or Edward had bought for me or clicked with me in case of photos were no longer present. It was almost like it had never been there. The rocking chair in my room stayed but there was nothing to prove that anyone had actually sat on it to watch me sleep.

Today asking Jacob this was almost one of my last hopes. He had been the one to tell me the legends that had helped me find out about Edward being a vampire and I needed to know if he knew anything of the Cullens being real.

I got my chance a little while later when Jacob went to drop his empty plate into the kitchen after dinner.

"Jacob" I said making him turn to look at me

"Hey Bells" he said with a cheery grin "How are you doing chica?"

We made small talk for a while before I asked him what I had come here for.

I took a deep breath before asking him my question "Jacob you remember you had once told me the legends of your tribe?"

He nodded his head with an even bigger grin on his face "Yeah you had been so freaked out"

Bingo!

"What had happened exactly that day?" I coaxed ahead

"You had come to first beach with the others from your school. We had met and then we had got talking and I had told you the legends and you had freaked out saying that this was sure to give you nightmares"

"That's it?" I asked raising my eyebrow slightly

He nodded his head looking confused "Yeah"

"Did I ask you anything about the Cullens?"

He shook his head firmly "I have never even heard that name in my life"

I sighed before nodding my head and letting him leave the room. So this hope of mine was also crushed. Were they even real?

X-X-X-X-X-X-X

Life soon became normal after that and slowly I came to accept that maybe they had just been a dream I had made up. School started again and Angela and Ben helped me settle into it. Ben was still one of my closest friends and with every passing day it seemed like we became closer.

Jacob and Billy over came over for dinner often and they too had become constants in my new life. Soon the time for my eighteenth birthday came and I celebrated it with a small party attended by my school friends, Charlie, Billy, Jacob and even Renee and Phil who had come over from Jacksonville specially for my birthday.

Life seemed good and the void that I had thought had been there when I had first woken up from my coma was now being filled.

Still every few days I would run an internet search to see if I could find anything about the Cullens but as always there was nothing about them on the internet as I expected.

Time passed and I graduated deciding to take a break year before I left for college with Ben, Angela and Eric who were all planning for Udub and had convinced me to join them too. But before I left there was one last thing I had to do to finally let Edward and the Cullens go.

Edward had once told me of his cousins in Denali, Alaska and for the sake of my mind I had decided to go there once and see. He had told me one of his cousin's name was Tanya Denali and if on visiting I would find no such person I would finally let it go accepting that Edward, the Cullen family, James, Victoria, the baseball game… everything had just been my dream that I had seen and they were not real. If I wanted to finally move on in life I felt like I had to do this.

Charlie had been reluctant to let me go so far by road journey but then he had agreed on one condition.

"You really don't have to do this you know" I said looking at my co-passenger as he sat in the seat beside me.

He shrugged "I have never seen Alaska. Might as well see a new place"

I shook my head with a small smile that stayed there as I turned on the music and started the car that Charlie had bought me as a graduation gift. The distance from Forks to Alaska was around 2,318 miles or 3,730 Kms and could be completed in forty five hours approximately but we were taking several detours to see the few excursions we were excited to see on the way.

The first few hours were spent with me driving and the both of us singing along to the songs being played in the car and laughing at random silly jokes that other than the both of us no one would understand.

We alternated between taking turns to drive playing all sort of road games some boring, some exciting, some played before and some new revealing even more information about ourselves.

A constant smile though stayed on our faces throughout.

A question though had been troubling me from days and now finally hours into our journey as he drove and I played with the ring on my last finger, I decided to get it out.

"Ben, can I ask you something?"

He nodded his head with an hmm telling me to continue.

"Do you love me?"

I often got the feeling that he did love me but I always chickened out from asking him so not knowing how he will respond and how I would react to his response.

He laughed out loud confusing me and soon shook his head when he saw my confusion "Bella you really need to ask me that? I have loved you since years now. For me you were 'it' the first time I got to know how caring, loving, sweet yet strong a person Bella Swan was. She was perfect and I was in awe of that perfection"

I blushed at his words looking at my lap as he continued talking

"The question here though is do you love me?"

His voice was soft but filled with doubt and unsure emotions as if he was scared that I would say no.

Was I going to say no? Did I love him?

I closed my eyes as the past year passed through my mind showing me memories of the time we had spent together from how he had helped me during physiotherapy after my accident to how we had studied together for the finals laughing more than studying. Our friendly dates with Angela and Eric and how Charlie already treated Ben like a son when he came over for dinner once a week.

Ben was my best friend and had stood with me through thick and thin in this entire roller coaster ride that I had found myself in. He had never doubted me, never said that I was crazy for believing to be dating someone who did not even exist. He loved me. He trusted me.

I opened my eyes again, a few tears leaving me eyes. I knew my answer to his question and I could not be surer of it.

I turned to look at him, something else catching my eye out of the window.

"Stop the car" I said all of a sudden. He looked confused for a minute as I repeated what I had said and he hit the brake. I jumped out of the car running back to what I had seen while Ben followed me too, to confused by my reaction.

I walked to the huge tree that had captured my attention and ripped out the leaf that had made me stop the car in the first place.

"What is it Bella?" asked Ben but I ignored him and read what was written on the leaf before smelling it once. It smelt good, the scent of a perfume I had smelt before but could not recollect now as if it had been a while.

I read the words again. I did not know who had written them on this leaf and why it had captured my attention out of everything but I could not stop myself from reading and taking in these words again. They could mean nothing for another but for me they meant everything at this moment.

Ben looked over my shoulder to read what had left me so still at my place and I tightened my grip over his hand as the both of us read the same words again.

'_You can't start the next chapter of your life if you keep re-reading your last one. Let the past go. Live for your present. Live for yourself'_

The words were simple but meant so much to me.

"Bella are you okay?" asked Ben looking at me with slight worry in his eyes.

I smiled. I had never been better and I now knew what I had to do ahead.

Without thinking much and ignoring the confused look on his face I pushed myself closer to him connecting our lips together for the first out of many times. He wrapped his arms around me tightly as I ran his hands through his soft hair moaning at the intensity that was being created by our joined lips.

It was magical. It was beautiful. It was perfect and there were no other words to describe what was happening between us at the moment, just that I never wanted it to end.

"What was that for?" asked Ben as we reluctantly separated though his arms stayed around me, just like I always wanted them to be.

I cupped his cheeks in my hand before whispering "I love you silly"

A/N: So was it a dream or did the Cullens actually exist? I actually have two answers for this question. It depends on what you want to believe in. The first is obviously that it was a dream Bella had seen in her Coma and assumed to be real with what others saying being true and the other answer to this question is- No, It was not a dream. The Cullens did exist and everything that had happened between Edward and Bella did actually happen but when Edward saw Bella's broken bitten body in the Ballet Studio after killing James and Victoria, who had also been there that day, he had decided against staying with Bella any longer. He wanted her to stay human and be with a human and he knew that if she had any memory of him or the supernatural world than that would never be possible.

One thing Bella had not known about the Cullens was that Esme too had a power, a power so strong that she refused to use it unless necessary and so Edward had not told Bella of it thinking it was not necessary. The power was the power of creating illusions and making a person believe what she wants them to believe. She rarely ever used this power but Edward had convinced her this time around and so after going back to Forks, Esme had whispered the story Edward wanted her to speak in the air, knowing that everyone close to a hundred miles or one hundred and sixty Kms will believe in this story as that was the extent of her power. The story was that Bella had moved to Forks to live with Charlie, had attended school here and had fallen for Ben Cheney with Angela Weber being her best friend and the accident that had landed her in the hospital had been a road accident. She had also added that no one would remember the Cullens or anything about them and every conversation which saw their name being spoken will occur but without their name being mentioned and so this was how no one remembered the Cullens.

While Esme and Edward were involved in this, Jasper and Alice had totaled Bella's truck using one of their own causing the accident and Emmett and Rosalie had gone over to the Swan house to delete the emails and remove all other physical reminders that were there.

Once all this was done Edward and Esme had gone over to Ben's house to create new memories in his mind to make their story more believable. The reason why Ben over the other boys was that Edward found him more decent than all the others in their year and he felt that even if they broke up and stayed friends he was a good person to have around Bella.

The last thing they had done was flying to Jacksonville and planted the same memory in Renee's mind and deleted her emails too. They knew that Bella would remember because of her mental shield but they had assumed that with all others denying her story she would soon come to accept it.

So this is it, whichever explanation you prefer. Thank you for reading.


End file.
